If I Ruled The World...

Then I would do be a very busy man issuing serious butt kickings. You see, I just spoke with another realtor today, for some reason I can't seem to get anywhere with the whole house buying, it is getting old. The realtors won't give me the time of day without a pre-approved loan and the banks won't pre-approve me without knowing which house I want to buy!?! I am really getting frustrated with this, so today I just decided to sign whatever forms they make you sign to see If I qualify for their loans, somehow I am sure I am going to pay for that ($$$) even though they assured me it was all free. So I guess I am a step closer now at being a homeowner, being this the first time I let a realtor try to qualify me for a loan. Those guys don't listen either, they talked about interest only loans with me from the get go but I was not having any of it, I insisted that I would not go with interest only! They just did not listen and began to explain the benefits of interest only loans, I politely reminded them not to make me angry....that they would not like it when I'm angry!!!!

Holidayosaurus

I ended up visiting this kind of unknown thing today that I remembered driving by as a little kid, there were these dinosaurs on the side somewhere on the way to Palm Springs. So I took off with no plan, no map just a couple of bucks in my wallet. So just a couple of hours laters I spotted what I had been looking for. It was great, they were giving out some free food for some reason and since I was kind of hungry I decided to partake. Anyhow if anyone plans on driving through I-10 anytime soon remember to keep an eye out for the Dino's right around where the wind farms are at (you know those wind things used to make electricity!). This is what they look like, they are also somewhat famous for coming out in Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, you know that movie in the 80's.

Slow Day!

Nothing went on at all today, work was slow and I was bored. I reorganized and cleaned out a tool box and that was about the only thing productive accomplished. Lunch was provided for us today and it was great, we ordered out paid by the company! Much deserved rest!

Surrounded by Biffs!

I was so beat at work today, enough so that it really took me a long time at getting functional this morning! I must have had like 4 cups of coffee to get me going. Only one more day of work though and then a few days off, starting this Monday! Somehow I was lucky enough to be off on an actual holiday, I am so glad about that! So after the coffee and getting all of the morning stuff out of the way, we were approaching lunchtime. Earlier in the shift we had decided on cooking up some lasagna but we had to go shopping for the ingredients. So I drove with another operator to get the stuff at a local supermarket and as I was exiting the freeway on the off ramp, attempting to merge over to the surface street, 69 Biff's a.k.a. (bicyclists) came out of nowhere and completely surrounded me! Some passed me on the left and some on the right, I was kind enough to stop for them and cede the right of way. Having a big monster truck I could have easily hurt some of them. I thought this was kind of unsafe, as they should have stuck together. I guess some of the riders that passed me on the right must have been inexperienced? I know when motorcycle rides are planned out they mix experienced riders in the front, middle, and back of the group. I hope they realize that they could have gotten hurt if it would not have been for my respect of the bicycle way of life!!! I know their are websites like this one recommended by the Biff on how to ride solo, but are there any for group riding? If not there should be! I know motorcyclists do, we even have a little pre-evolution tailboarded brief to make sure everyone knows what to do, or who to follow!

Feeling A Little Uninspired

I have not written in a couple days, I think it has been the lack of riding but whatever it is I wish it just go away? It could have something to do with the great weather we have been having lately since I have not sat down on the computer long enough to update my blog. Something about the weather being uber nice in southern california? Anyhow, I go back to work tomorrow so hopefully I get some good sleep tonight!

Just To Stay Awake!

I finally brought in my coffee grinder to make some fresh coffee at work. So far all the reviews are positive, I think I might even have some converts. I was sleeping well early in the morning, I was so tired when I got home that I skipped doing the laundry. I was in a far far away land when I was woken up by them church propaganda people, I was so mad! Unfortunately I was not dressed so I was unable to let them have it! Some people just have no courtesy, maybe I should have scared them off by yelling absurdities in my undies, that would have shown them!

It's About Time

I finally brought in the shop bicycle to work tonight. It has been quite fun thus far riding around that thing all night, which should facilitate my planned night of procuring cool stuff. It also made it a lot easier to get the midnight readings, so I think the bike project paid off! So far on my night of procuring I have seen some old SCBA tanks which don't see any more usage, and some shaving cream! I think the shaving cream is used to detect leaks or something?

Earlier today I got a call from an old buddy of mine who is going to school in Arizona, it was nice to hear from him since he seems to keep in touch with the old crew pretty well.

Dragging Myself To Work!

Let me start out by saying that the new Star Wars movie was awesome, I was lucky enough to get to watch it opening night yesterday! Anyhow I will be working nights for the next couple of days which is good in a way since I will be sleeping through this little heat wave we got going here.

Called In For Overtime!

I really did not feel like picking up the phone, I knew immediately what it was when I was woken up, but I picked up anyway! Heck I have to earn those dollars, and since I needed to make up lost revenue from my little casino trip, I gladly came in. They needed an extra body for a startup on one of the units today and luckily so far so good! I got to open up some huge valves again, this time it only took me like fifteen minutes a valve! Light fires in the boiler sometime after lunch.

In other news my car is still tireless and seatless! I have not decided with what tires to go with yet, and the seats are getting redone at the upholstery shop. I noticed earlier in the week that my truck is making some sort of a rubbing noise whenever the torque converter is doing its job, I wonder if this is normal or if it even is the torque converter? Whatever it is it seems to be more prevalent when at operating temperature, I'll minimize useage until I check it out (or get it checked out) till then I guess I will be forced to use the motorcycle. Luckily the weather has been great!

Same Old...

Not much to blog about here except that these seven days off in a row are going well, with 3 more to go I am not looking forward to going back to work! I turned in my bucket seats out of the Firebird to get reupholstered, I am amazed to see how much this stuff is actually costing. After these seats are done I will need to look for someone that does the weatherstripping in the car. Then it will be drive train and engine so I need to start saving my money. I just can't wait till all this is done!

Just Like Old Times, Sort Of!

Well I finally ended up going to one of the Indian gaming casinos here in California, about a two hour drive away. I had fun, although my luck was not with me today but at least I got to go shopping here afterwards so the drive was somewhat worth it! I don't think I would go here often as they did not have doubledeck blackjack and the drive itself is tough enough! So maybe this can be like a once a month thing?

Much Deserved Rest

I am living it up, these seven days of rest should do wonders for me. On Friday I picked up my wheels from the rim place, they did an excellent job. They even supposedly trued up my wheels along with fixing a crack! I never even thought car wheels needed truing or were even able to be trued, but like many other wheels they need truing too!?! The drive home sucked big time, traffic can be a pain sometimes, one of the penalties for living in southern California I guess. The weather is also starting to warm up, due to this we will probably be busy at work in order to support California on this, at my plant alone we can produce 1000 megawatts (1 gigawatt) so I should be busy putting in some overtime. I have also decided to be a little more subtle on the car restoration, I am going to try and stay as stock as possible engine-wise saving some money! Thus I should be able to free up some money allowing me to do some more stuff on the outside. I hear decals are very pricey and this is definitely not one place I am willing to deviate. Next will be interior, I should get started this Monday! Oh well time to get back to watching some pay per view boxing, I hope Trinidad wins against Winky Wright!

If you are bored and would like to kill some time I ran across this from one of the other operators at work, very time consuming!

En Fuego! Literally!

One of our generators caught fire today, it wasn't the actual generator itself but some wood that was left behind by the scaffolders. They actually left some of the scaffold behind that was used during our maintenance outage over the past few months, I guess wood sitting on 1000 degree piping is a bad thing! It was left behind in the "black hole" area beneath the generator so it is kind of easy to see how they could miss that. Anyhow we discharged a fire extinguisher and some fire hoses to put the fire out. I wondered for a bit if it was actually lamer fighting fake fires vs. real ones? At least with the real fires common sense applies!!!

In other news I got a call telling me my wheels for the Firebird are ready, I had them restored and need some new skins!

Finally Got Here Early!

I finally got to work a little earlier than normal, miraculously there was no traffic whatsoever on the way in! I decided to get myself some breakfast since I had some time to kill and I still managed to get to the plant a few minutes early.

I hope everyone had a great mother's day weekend, my mom was out of town visiting her mom so I had to borrow someone else's for the day! We went to dinner at this nice little Italian place in Hollywood, this was definitely one of those do not judge the book by it's cover, I mean this place was pretty darn good. I had a couple of glasses of some fine vino which really went well with the meal. On Saturday I had gone shopping for some more work clothes, I got myself a couple of work shirts but am still looking for some more pants. Oh well, I am looking forward to this week at work mainly because after this Thursday I will have seven days off in a row! Once a month our shiftwork schedule allows for seven days off, and if I decide to come in (which I might) I will get compensated $$$ for it!

Feliz Cinco De Mayo!

I hope everyone is planning on celebrating proper tonight, a little bit of tequila and maybe some Mexican Brew! As for me I slept most of the day, it was great. I came in to have some chips and guacamole provided by one of the other operators on the shift, it was good. There were also some left over donuts from the day shift, those went good with a nice pot of fresh coffee!

Early in the morning toward the end of last night's shift we were mixing up a batch of chemicals to add to one of our cooling water systems, basically a corrosion inhibitor in a powder form. So the approx. 100 gallon mixing tank has a weak mixing setup, it was originally designed as a heated tank allowing for better solubility (heater is broke and non existent). So to make a long story short, chemicals mixed but we ended up with a layer of powdery slush at the bottom of the tank and were unable to completely drain it. The drain clogged up when we finished pumping! I decided this was an issue I did not want to turn over and plugged in a rubber hose into an aux steam line (800# actually), tapped into the drain line and blew it out. I then duct taped the hose to a broom stick and blew out the inside of the tank into the drain line. In retrospect this was probably not the safest solution, but hey it worked!

I Think I Might be Traumatized

A lot of stuff seems to be going on around me, mostly due to the fact that traffic here can really suck sometimes. I was a couple of minutes late last night, and since both our plants are up, turnover is somewhat important. This meant the guy I relieved had to stick around a bit while I struggled on the freeway. My bad, I will go in a little early tonight to make it up. All this traffic seems to be stemming from the Police's increase in coverage on the highways, they are supposed to be keeping an eye for freeway shooters but somehow they just seem to issuing more citations. Funny how that works, but I do agree that their are a lot of people out there who just don't belong on the road (especially those that don't look for motorcycles) and if issuing more citations works, than so be it. Oh yes...THE FOLLOWING IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE THAT GROSS OUT EASILY, OR ARE PLANNING ON EATING SOON. THIS MIGHT JUST SPOIL YOUR APPETITE... So last night toward the end of our shift we are just about to finish startup on unit 5, with unit 6 already up and running this made for a very busy night. We are about to light fires on the boiler meaning that we had to run around outside monitoring the start of all our fans when I heard this strange, squishy, crunching sound that felt rather grotesque. Keeping in mind that it is about 4 in the morning and somewhat dark out, and my senses are not the sharpest, so after hearing that strange sound of carnage coming from my boot I really did not want to look, as I had mind my mind up not to look this strong malodorous, putrid, rank of a smell just overcame me! I started pseudo-gagging to get the attention of the other operator who came over very quicklike and I was kind enough to show the most disturbing set of mangled rat guts known to man! It took me quite a while to get over this, I actually soaked my boot in a caustic bath (NaOH), Industrial degreaser, and Ammonia!

Learning People's quirks

I have been at my job long enough now that I am beginning to pick up on people's quirks, you know the funny little things people do differently from everyone else. My shift likes to brew coffee but keeps the heating pad off to keep it fresher longer, they nuke it right before drinking? I will have to get used to this one, or convert them into coffee snobs like I once was. Oh and it is still customary here to brew a fresh pot for the relieving shift, I assumed this duty myself willingly.

I finally got started on my car, I turned in my wheels to have them trued up and restored! No twenties will ever touch my car, or spinners for that matter, they are so tacky! Nothing like OEM parts, speaking of OEM parts I had a new found respect of OEM parts when working at the motorcycle shop and today the funniest thing happened...You see my truck was leaking oil from somewhere below while it was not running, I assumed it was from the drain plug (engine being off and all this should be the only logical place to leak from) but not really! After draining all of the remaining oil out of the truck and sealing it back up with some fresh new washers and gaskets for the drain plug I fire it up, leak still remains, I inspect this time and it is coming from the oil filter! Just 1000 miles old too, so I bought myself a new one, and swore to myself to buy OEM from now on! For Ford vehicles that would be motorcraft. No more Fram for me, or spinners, or twenties, or butt ugly spoilers, I like my car just the way it came from the assembly line!

Getting Things Done....Well Trying!

I managed to get some things done as today was my day off! I will have to transition over to a night schedule tonight and will try to stay up as late as possible. This would have been a breeze if I still lived back in Bremerton, heck I would not even need an excuse to stay out all night! Doing some research on parts for my car I realized that if I get this I will need one of these. But enough about that, I enjoyed a nice little motorcycle ride today! The weather was great, it made for a nice ride home at night tolerable since I don't use any gear. I tried working on the car and truck but I ended up just chatting with my neighbors, maybe I was just avoiding work but I was unordinarilly chatty today? Oh well I got some stuff done on the car!

Plans for Future Domination

I don't really know what it is but something about driving my car seems to jump start my imagination. I have been neglecting my car for so long now that I don't really drive it anymore and aside from minor maintenance I have not done anything to it in years. So I have decided to fix it up, the most important thing I have planned will be to install a brand spanking new engine assembled by the edelbrock guys (essentially ready to run right out of the box) and rebuilding the transmission. The engine swap I should/could do myself but the transmission work will be outsourced. After that I will need to get a new rear end more than likely some sort of limited slip, I will also get all four wheels restored and polished with some new tires. Last but not least I will get a nice paint job. I just can't wait, I have tomorrow off and will start by putting my car up in blocks and taking in the wheels! This whole thing should take the better part of a year to accomplish at little bits here and there, trying not to spend too much all at once! I am sure the plan will continually change, so what will all this cost? Well I estimate around 12K or so, the engine itself is around 9K but I think it will all be worth it.